March 24, 2009

“A great lost Jonathan Richman LP, from unreleased studio sessions, all the songs are different versions to anything officially released, and a couple of them, far as I know, never found their way onto any other JR recordings. This is probably the only place you’ll hear a copy of ‘In The Checkout Line’ and ‘Try This Brand New Dance’.”

For his support of “outsted” Perak state minister Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin and speaking out against the Perak sultan, Malaysian blogger (and royalty) Raja Petra Kamarudin thinks that his family might even disown him as he prepares to exile himself from the state of Selangor.

On his Malaysia Today site, blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin (who is of royal blood and also known as Pete) has urged Mohammad Nizar to stand firm and even challenge the state’s sultan if need be. Raja Petra’s open letter to Mohammad Nizar has drawn criticisms from his Aunty Fuziah, who feels Raja Petra must not speak out against one of their own and apologise to the rulers and the public.

Unlike many other men who hanker after girls in school uniform, in Keisuke Yoshidaa’s Raw Summer (2006), the boorish Yutaka Mishima does not live out his fetish and his obsession with prostitutes who cater to his tastes. Instead, he stalks schoolgirl Sora Aoi. Stephen Tan reviews.

Office worker Yutaka Mishima lives in a house with his brother and his sister but his bedroom is a shrine to schoolgirl Sora Aoi. Unlike others who prefer to keep their obsessions private, Yutaka’s sister and brother know of his fetish but they do not see anything wrong with this. Photographs of the schoolgirl are plastered all over the walls and there is even a pair of the uniform to keep Yutaka company.

March 23, 2009

FRANKIE VALLI
Live At The Tropicana [no label, 1CD]Live at Tropicana Casino , Atlantic City, New Jersey , September 11, 1986. An excellent soundboard recording from the RS Archives.

This show in Atlantic City is many years down the road from Grease but Valli still has his voice intact and those magical hits still shine. We borrow this recording shared on the Dime site to share with those of you who can’t do torrents. It’s shared by music fans Mexminute and The Commish.

Of the Eric Clapton Japan 2009 shows that are currently available for sharing, this is probably the only date that originates from a soundboard. This show was broadcast on Japanese satellite TV and a word of thanks to Japrainbow for extracting the tracks and sharing them on the internet. While the audience recording of the earlier show was already very good, fans will no doubt enjoy a show that is broadcast quality. Thanks also to profec for the artwork.

This is an excellent web journal. If you like Counterpunch, Information Clearing House and Alternet, this should be essential reading as well. All the news that fits these days are coming from alternative media. Join their mailing list.

March 19, 2009

Prog rock opened the door to non-English-speaking bands. Focus from the Netherlands paved the way for European rockers. Once again it was all about the music.

FOCUS
The Sky Will Fall Over London Tonight [Progressive Rock Remaster Project 027, 1CD]Live at the BBC Studio, London, December 12, 1972. Very good soundboard.

As Bob Harris, the host of the Old Grey Whistle Test at the time, recalled in the liner notes: “The performance was an absolute sensation. People had never seen anything quite like them before… Their performance generated incredible reaction and suddenly everything seemed to be happening very fast. We were inundated with calls, letters and enquiries about this amazing band. Hocus Pocus broke into the U.K. singles chart, then Sylvia the following week, climbing into the top 5. Moving Waves and Focus 3 stormed into the top 10 of the album chart.”

Nowadays it looks as if anyone with an internet account is a blogger and a potential journalist or reporter, generating views and news. If that’s the case, internet consultant Clay Shirky asks: what does the future hold for traditional newspapers?

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

It’s been two weeks since the Pirate Bay trial came to an end – at least for now. While the judge reviews the arguments presented by both sides, Ernesto of TorrentFreak caught up with Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde to look forward to the decision and review the tumultuous events of the past weeks.

In previous articles TorrentFreak covered the Pirate Bay trial in detail. From the King Kong defense, through website screenshots as evidence, to flowers for the wife of one of the expert witnesses. Now that things have settled down a little, we took the opportunity to ask one of the defendants some questions of our own. We spoke with Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde about the trial and the future of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.

You think you know her but you don’t. That’s because Grace Quek’s porn persona, Annabel Chong, is not just a “piece of meat” who set a world record in 1995 when she had sex with 251 men. Grace’s quest is a re-definition of female sexuality, where women can be the studs that men aspire to. And guess what? She was born and bred in $ingapore. Gerrie Lim gets this BigO Exclusive with Grace where she speaks of the porn industry, her early years in $ingapore, of womanhood and sex, of course. This article was published in BigO #160 (April 1999).

The world knows about her now, in all her ragged glory. Annabel Chong is the only porn star to come out of $ingapore, and of late there’s been a documentary film about her life, Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, which elicited press raves when it received its world premiere in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Four years earlier, on January 19, 1995, she’d made history when she set a world record by having sex with 251 men in under 10 hours, and the event was recorded for posterity on home video. It’s still what she’s best known for, despite a career in the adult film industry since 1994 that drew notices for her frenzied carnal antics, in films with self-explanatory titles like All I Want For Christmas Is A Gangbang and I Can’t Believe I Did The Whole Team!